Tag: Warby Parker

From recent headlines you might assume that sales in brick & mortar stores must be falling off a cliff. You’d be wrong. Yes, e-commerce is growing at a much faster rate, but revenues in physical stores remain positive (1%-2% growth depending on the source). There is also a sense that online shopping is becoming the dominant way most people shop. In fact, even with a dramatic share shift, e-commerce still represents less than 10% of total retail sales and is expected to remain below 20% even 5 years from now.

Moreover, if physical retail is dying somebody should tell well established (and quite profitable) retailers like Aldi, Apple, Costco, TJX, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Nordstrom, H&M, Ulta and Sephora. Collectively they’ve announced plans to open about 3,000 stores. Newer brands–think, Bonobos, Casper, Warby Parker–that were once dubbed geniuses for their “digitally native” strategy are now opening dozens of physical stores as their online-only plans proved limited and unprofitable. A little outfit from Seattle also has recently made a pretty big bet on physical retail.

So the constant media references to a “retail apocalypse” may serve as great clickbait, but they lack both accuracy and nuance. I believe we’re all better served by not painting the industry with too broad a brush and spinning false narratives.

Nevertheless, it is crystal clear that years of overbuilding, failure to innovate on the part of most traditional retailers, shifting customer preferences and market-share grabs from transformative new models that aren’t held to a traditional profit standard (mostly the little outfit in Seattle) are creating fundamentally new dynamics. Physical retail is not going away, but digital disruption is transforming most sectors of retail profoundly. Here are a few important things to bear in mind:

Good enough no longer is. Mediocre retailers were protected for years by what was once scarce: scarcity of product and pricing information, scarcity of assortment choice, scarcity of strong local competition, scarcity of convenient ways for product delivery. Digital commerce has created anytime, anywhere, anyway access to just about everything and the weaknesses of many retailers’ business models have been laid bare. Traditional retailers’ failure to innovate over the past decade has put quite a few in an untenable position from which they will never recover. It turns out they picked a really bad time to be so boring.

E-commerce is important. Digital-first retail is more important. The rise of e-commerce is having a dramatic effect on shopping behavior but it is not the most disruptive factor in retail. What’s far more transformative is the fact that most customer journeys for transactions that ultimately occur in a brick & mortar location start in a digital channel–and increasingly that means on a mobile device. In fact, digitally-influenced physical stores sales are far greater than all of e-commerce. Many brands’ failure to understand this reality caused them to waste a lot of time and money building strong online capabilities at the expense of keeping their stores and the overall shopping experience relevant and remarkable.

Physical and digital work in concert. A retail brand’s strong digital presence drives brick & mortar sales and vice versa. When different media and transactional channels work in harmony, the brand is more relevant. When any aspect is unremarkable or creates friction, the brand suffers. Too often, traditional retailers treat digital and physical retail as two distinct entities when most customers are, as some like to say, “phygital.” Moreover, with the exception of products that can literally be delivered digitally (books, games, music), there is rarely any inherent reason why the rise of e-commerce should make a substantial number of physical stores completely irrelevant. Retailers that are closing a lot of stores most often have a business model problem, not a “too many stores” problem.

The future will not be evenly distributed. Clearly, there are brands and retail categories that are being “Amazon-ed.” There are also sectors that have been in long-term decline (department stores and many regional malls), whose troubles have little to do with what’s transpired most recently. Still others have remained largely immune from the disruptive forces that are hitting others so hard. Off-price chains, warehouse clubs, dollar stores and gas stations all come to mind. Grocery shopping has also seen little impact, though that’s likely to change. It’s also important to note that some forces that are shaping the industry have little to do with e-commerce vs. physical stores shopping or the notion that Amazon is eating the world. Many sectors are being hit by a fundamental change in shopping behavior (a shift to experiences away from stuff, a tendency to trade down to lower price points) that has nothing to do with how spending is being reallocated away from brick & mortar to online. Your mileage may vary.

To be sure, a degree of panic is appropriate in some circles. It’s obvious that many retailers spent more time defending the status quo and burying their heads in the sand during the past decade than they did understanding the consumer and being committed to innovation. Some retailers need to adapt. Some need to transform the customer experience fundamentally. Others just need to go away. Most need to take bold and decisive action to stay relevant and remarkable in a very different and constantly evolving world.

The big question is whether they will act while they still have time.

A version of this story recently appeared at Forbes, where I am a retail contributor. You can check out more of my posts and follow me here.

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If you follow retail at all you’ve no doubt read multiple recent stories claiming that we are in the midst of a “retail apocalypse.” Like Chicken Little, these journalists and pundits see the sky falling on physical stores and a veritable tsunami of store closings, mall foreclosures and bankruptcies. I imagine they also expect a plague of locusts to descend upon us at any minute, as darkness covers the land.

Of course, this is all nonsense. The reports of traditional retail’s death are, to paraphrase Mark Twain, “greatly exaggerated”–as several of my esteemed colleagues have rightly pointed out. Barring an asteroid hitting Earth, the vast majority of retail will still be done in brick & mortar stores for a long, long time. Most of the major retail brands we know and love will remain household names. Hundred of regional malls will not only survive but continue to do quite well, thank you.

While the disaster scenarios are fake news, one can’t be too sanguine either. Yet, at the other end of the spectrum, we now have an emerging cadre of apocalypse deniers, who counter the claims of the alarmists with their own equally false narrative. Let’s take a look at their most common arguments.

Retail is still growing. This is true, but very misleading. First, the tepid growth in physical retail is not keeping pace with inflation, contributing to a profit squeeze for most players. Second, the main thing that nudges the number into the positive is the concentrated out-sized growth in a few categories, most notably off-price and dollar stores. So the growth in retail is good for a few–and pretty much sucks for everyone else.

Overbuilding of stores is causing a one-time correction. I’d rate this one “true-ish.” The US has been over-stored and over-malled for more than a decade and eventually, the bubble had to burst. But the rationalization and consolidation of commercial real estate go beyond a mere correction, however deep. We are witnessing a fundamental re-structuring of both the number of retail locations and the size and configuration of those boxes. Certainly, a big whack to the stores counts of flagging retailers was (and remains) overdue. And I do expect that the pace of store closings will subside substantially after the first quarter of next year. But anyone who doesn’t see the profound shift is missing the big picture.

Besides lots of new stores are opening. Yes, and this is one of the reasons that physical retail is far from extinct. But–and it’s a big but–while thousands of new stores are opening, they are, almost across the board, much smaller footprints than the stores being shuttered AND they are typically located in very different types of real estate. Hundreds of TJ Maxx and Dollar General stores don’t come close to offsetting the impact of hundreds of Sears, J.C. Penney and Macy’s closings. And while the store openings of “disruptors” like Bonobos and Warby Parker get a lot of press, not only are their stores tiny, they are very likely to slow their pace substantially unless they can begin to demonstrate profitability.

Malls and retailers are re-inventing themselves with an emphasis on experience. Without question, the most successful malls are reformatting, adding restaurants, theaters, hot specialty formats and other experiential elements to differentiate themselves and drive foot traffic. The problem is bulldozing a mall anchor and/or replacing failed retail tenants with a steak house, juice bar or art show may be smart business for the developer, but it doesn’t necessarily help the retailers that are struggling. As far as retailers themselves, yes, a few are investing in experiential improvements, but for every cool Nike or Apple store there are dozens of retailers that haven’t invested a bit in innovation (or have limited themselves to some gimmicky shiny object that has an immaterial impact on customer relevancy).

The issue is that the future of retail will not be evenly distributed. Far from it.

Even a small shift of spending online (or failure to maintain real growth) can cause a great deleveraging of physical store economics. The closing (or massive re-purposing) of lower quality malls will be highly disruptive to particular major tenants. Online is growing disproportionately, affecting certain categories far more than others. Customers’ continued willingness to trade down and shop for discounts puts greater pressure on retailers with weaker value propositions and poor cost positions. And on and on.

Apocalypse? No.

But the suggestion that most retailers are not seeing their world’s rocked mightily is both misguided and dangerous. Similarly, the blanket notion that the sky is falling on everyone is equally wrong-headed.

Yet the harsh reality is that few retailers will escape unscathed from the seismic changes affecting the industry. Indeed we stand at a precipice. Without radical change and heretofore unseen levels of innovation, many major players are in for a world of hurt.

The clock is ticking. I’d hurry if I were you.

A version of this story recently appeared at Forbes, where I am a retail contributor. You can check out more of my posts and follow me here.

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Last week Target became the latest retailer to report weak earnings and shrinking physical store sales. They certainly won’t be the last.

As more retail brands disappoint on both the top and bottom lines–and announce scores of store closings–many may conclude that brick-and-mortar retail is going they way of the horse-drawn carriage. Unfortunately this ignores the fact that roughly 90% of all retail is still done in actual stores. It doesn’t recognize that many retailers–from upstarts like Warby Parker and Bonobos, to established brands such as TJMaxx and Dollar General–are opening hundreds of new locations. It also fails to acknowledge the many important benefits of in-store shopping and that study after study shows that most consumers still prefer shopping in a store (including millennials!)

Brick-and-mortar retail is very different, but not dead. Still, most retailers will, regardless of any actions they take, continue to cede share to digital channels, whether it’s their own or those of disruptive competitors. To make the best of a challenging situation, retailers need a laser-like focus on increasing their piece of a shrinking pie, while optimizing their remaining investment in physical locations. And here we must deal with the reality that aside from the inevitable forces shaping retail’s future, there are many addressable faults in retailers’ stores. Here are a few of the most pervasive issues.

The Sea Of Sameness

Traditionalists often opine that it all about product, but that’s just silly. Experiences and overall solutions often trump simply offering the best sweater or coffee maker. Nevertheless, too many stores are drowning in a sea of sameness–in product, presentation and experience. The redundancy in assortments is readily apparent from any stroll through most malls. The racks, tables and signage employed by most retailers are largely indistinguishable from each other. And when was the last time there was anything memorable about the service you received from a sales associate at any of these struggling retailers?

One Brand, Many Channels

Too many stores still operate as independent entities, rather than an integral piece of a one brand, many channels customer strategy. Most customer journeys that result in a physical store visit start online. Many customers research in store only to consummate the transaction in a digital channel. The lines between digital and physical channels are increasingly blurred, often distinctions without a difference. Silos belong on farms.

Speed Bumps On The Way To Purchase

How often is the product we wish to buy out of stock? How difficult is it to find a store associate when we are ready to checkout? Can I order online and pick up in a store? If a store doesn’t have my size or the color I want can I easily get it shipped to my home quick and for free? Most of the struggling retailers have obvious and long-standing friction points in their customer experience. When in doubt about where to prioritize operational efforts, smoothing out the speed bumps is usually a decent place to start.

Where’s The Wow?

As Amazon makes it easier and easier to buy just about anything from them, retailers must give their customers a tangible reason to traffic their stores and whip out their wallets once there. Good enough no longer is. Brands must dig deep to provide something truly scarce, relevant and remarkable. Much of the hype around in-store innovations is just that. For example, Neiman Marcus’ Memory Mirrors are cool, but any notion that they will transform traffic patterns, conversion rates or average ticket size on a grander scale is fantasy. Much of what is being tested is necessary, but hardly sufficient. The brands that are gaining share (and, by the way, opening stores) have transformed the entire customer experience, not merely taken a piecemeal approach to innovation.

Treat Different Customers Differently

In an era where there was relative scarcity of product, shopping channels and information, one-size-fits all strategies worked. But now the customer is clearly in charge, and he or she can often tailor their experience to their particular wants and needs. Retailers need to employ advanced analytical techniques and other technologies to make marketing and the overall customer experience much more personalized, and to allow for greater and greater customization. More and more art and intuition are giving way to science and precision.

Physical retail is losing share to e-commerce at the rate of about 110 basis points per year. While that is not terribly significant in the aggregate, this erosion will not be evenly distributed and the deleveraging of physical store economics will prove devastating to many slow to react retailers. This seemingly inexorable shift is causing many retailers to reflexively throw up their hands and choose to disinvest in physical retail. The result, as we’ve seen in spades, is that many stores are becoming boring warehouses of only the bestselling, most average product, presented in stale environments with nary a sales associate in sight.

The fault in our stores are legion. But adopting an attitude that stores are fundamentally problems to be tolerated–or eliminated–rather than assets to be leveraged and improved, makes the outcome inevitable and will, I fear, eventually seal the fate of many once great retailers.

A version of this story appeared at Forbes, where I am a retail contributor. You can check out more of my posts here.

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There has been a strong and growing narrative that the single smartest thing a struggling retailer can do is to close stores and, in some cases, a lot of them. I first touched on this nearly three years ago in my post “Shrinking to prosperity: The store closing delusion.”

There is no question that, in aggregate, the United States has too much retail space. There is no question that, in concept, the growth of e-commerce can allow an omni-channel retailer to serve some trade areas more profitably without a store and some trade areas with a smaller box. The key is to understand “some” and that starts with understanding why a given brand is under-performing in the first place. The other key is to understand the role that brick & mortar locations play in driving e-commerce–and vice versa.

In most cases, as recent events are bearing out more and more, store closings make an already irrelevant retailer less relevant. And frequently much less profitable as well.

Nearly 90% of traditional retail is still done in physical stores. In five years it will still be about 85%. The math is not that complicated.

Make it harder to get to a store OR make returns in a store OR order online and pick up in a store OR go to a store to research potential purchases OR learn about the brand, etc. and a retailer is almost certain to lose way more business (and margin dollars) to a competitor’s physical store in the vacated trade area than the brand “rationalizing” its store count will ever be able to make up through its website. This is why JC Penney, Home Depot and Lowes should write Eddie Lampert thank you notes pretty much every day.

Moreover, the symbiotic nature of digital and physical channels should not be ignored, yet often is. Several retailers–Sears is perhaps the best example–made the assumption that by investing in digital at the expense of physical stores they could more profitability serve their customer base over the long-term. As it turns out (and as more retailers are learning), e-commerce is often less profitable at the margin than brick & mortar operations and that when you close stores you actually make it more difficult for your e-commerce business to thrive. Oops.

Any retailer in trouble should absolutely analyze whether closing and/or “right-sizing” stores will be accretive to cash-flow. But that analysis MUST include the impact on long-term competitiveness and digital channel sales in the affected store’s trade area. Thinking you are helping when in fact you are merely initiating a downward spiral is a pretty big mistake to make.

Any analyst pushing for store closings and footprint down-sizing should be mindful that it is almost never the case that a struggling retailer’s ills are because they have too many stores or that the stores they have are fundamentally too large. Rather, it is because their brand relevance is not big enough for the channels, both physical and digital, that they have. Be careful what you wish for.

Show me a retail brand that is remarkable and relevant enough to command the share of attention that drives share of market and I’m virtually certain their executives are not spending a second on down-sizing. In fact, most are opening physical stores (e.g Nordstrom, Warby Parker, Amazon, TJX) and, in many cases, a bunch of them.

Show me a retail brand that is consumed with store closings and expense reduction and there is a pretty good chance they are a dead brand walking.

Thanks to those who have encouraged me along my path as I took a six month break from writing this blog. During my sabbatical I started a new blog on waking up to a life of love, purpose and passion at any age, which can be found at www.IGotHereAsFastAsICould.blog.

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“Retail disruption” has been a popular buzz phrase for several years now. In fact, most of the retail brands that have received out-sized mentions in the business press–and commanded the adoring attention of industry conference attendees–for the past 5 years or so are somehow or other leveraging digital innovation to fundamentally re-work the consumer experience, gobble up market share and attract truckloads of venture capital.

Amidst this transformative reshaping of the retail landscape three things are clear:

Consumers have benefitted substantially from the introduction of new business models through more convenience, greater product access and lower prices.

This profound shift in the consumer value equation has put enormous pressure on industry incumbents that lack either the cost structure or agility to respond effectively.

A dramatic rationalization is gaining momentum as traditional players are being forced out of business or pressured to close and or shrink the foot-print of their stores, make huge investments in “omni-channel” capabilities and lower costs across the board.

Unfortunately what is lost in tales of this evolution is that most of the “disruptive” pure-play e-commerce brands have completely unsustainable business models and mostly what is happening is that venture capitalists (and other investors) are funding a transfer of wealth to the consuming public. So, on behalf of my fellow consumers, thanks venture capitalists.

Alas, this is unlikely to last much longer.

While many people think digital retail is some sort of license to print money, it’s becoming clear that e-commerce is virtually profit proof in categories with low transaction values, owing primarily to the substantial supply chains costs (particularly when brands offer free shipping and returns). Moreover, while it can be relatively easy and cheap to build an initial following online through public relations, social media and other forms of peer-to-peer marketing, scaling an e-commerce only brand turns out to be extremely costly. Many of the buzziest pure-plays are now investing heavily in expensive branding efforts (as well as opening their own stores) in the hopes that size engenders profitability. Accordingly, initial expectations of break-evens are now being pushed out several years.

As the ROI of these efforts starts to come into sharper relief, my bet is many funding sources will lose their patience.

I’ve been an on-the-record skeptic for several years now, going back to when I called into question the sustainability of the flash-sales market well before the meltdown. More recently, I’ve been pointing out E-commerce’s pesky little profitability problem. So I’m not suprised that recent valuations of several once high flying players have collapsed. And more folks are starting to take notice. Professional smart guy (and noted wise ass) Scott Galloway agrees and has been on the “pure play doesn’t work” train for some time. Expect more to join us.

To be clear, a few digital-first brands will likely emerge as sustainable value creators. Brands with high enough average order values to overcome high delivery costs are better positioned (though Net-a-porter’s inability to make money after all these years underscores how difficult this is). Those that deftly merge online and offline experiences–think Warby Parker and Bonobos–also improve the odds (though, side-note, don’t be misled by the high productivity of their initial locations and comparisons to other brands’ productivity stats. We need to understand the four-wall profitability of these new stores and make comparisons to traditional retailers averages in like locations, not overall chain averages).

Mostly, however, we need to be careful to declare a brand successful without defining what we mean by success. If we define success as having grown revenues quickly and having been able to raise gobs of capital from investors to enable subsidizing consumers on a massive scale, than clearly Amazon and dozens of others are wildly successful. If we define success as creating enormous pricing pressure and raising the cost of doing business so as to push traditional players into a double-bind than, yes, mission accomplished.

But if we determine success as having demonstrated the ability to deliver a new and better customer experience AND earn a risk appropriate return on capital than I’m not sure any pure-play E-commerce player of any size is yet successful.

I will go on the record as saying far more pure plays will go bust in the next three years (or get sold at valuations well below their most recent funding) than will emerge as truly successful.

Until then, enjoy the low prices and the free shipping, and if you get some time, send the nice folks funding Jet.com and others a sincere and heartfelt “thank you” note.

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In case you haven’t noticed, there is a whole lot of bifurcation going on. And in many markets, the middle is all but collapsing.

At one end are the Walmart’s, the Home Depot’s, the Amazon’s–the low price, vast assortment guys. Their pitch is easy to understand. We have just about everything you could possibly want, virtually anytime you want it, at the low, low price. Operationally this is incredibly difficult to scale. But from the customer’s perspective, it couldn’t be more simple to grasp. Dominance and value (defined by price) creates meaning.

At the other end of the spectrum are the brands built around market niches, product differentiation and the somewhat intangible “brand personality.” What defines meaningfulness here is built on deep customer insight, emotional connection and, more and more, the ability to treat different customers differently.

Historically, luxury brands thrived by merchandising exclusive products in spectacular settings delivered face-to-face by well-trained sales associates. To the extent companies could replicate this model as they added stores, they could continue to create meaning and deliver it at scale. Yet, as all things digital become increasingly important, the notion of what constitutes a meaningful one-to-one “luxury” relationship is being challenged.

The best specialty stores have succeeded by curating merchandise for a particular “lifestyle” and presenting it in a distinctive environment that reinforced a unique brand image. These companies created a business model that was simple to replicate and led to the ubiquity of many of these brands in affluent malls and upscale shopping areas of most major cities. Now, with product choice and availability exploding and new micro-niche brands emerging online, the concept of “specialty” is being redefined.

The hyper-growth, venture-backed “pure-play” brands that have launched over the past few years–think Gilt, Bonobos, Warby Parker–found it comparatively easy to scale at first. They exploited many of the advantages of a direct-to-consumer model and employed low-cost acquisition techniques to build an initial base of customers–what I like to call the obsessive core.

But it turns out that creating meaning at the scale that will lead to profitability isn’t so easy (or economically viable). Too many newer customers of these high-flying brands have started to equate meaning with discounts. Others, it turns out rather predictably, need the meaning that comes from a physical presence to derive theirs. Many see this hybrid-model as an exciting new area of growth. Others see it as clear evidence that most e-commerce only brands are finding it very difficult to deliver meaning at scale.

In an anything, anytime, anywhere, anyway world, it’s getting harder and harder to break through the clutter, to win the battle for share of attention, to create the all essential meaning that matters for customers.

If you seem to be stuck in a sea of sameness, selling average products to average people, relentlessly promoting just to stay even, it’s time to get off the bridge. The collapse is near.

If your customer is choosing you mostly on price, you had better be the low-cost provider. Otherwise you will lose the inevitable race to the bottom.

If you believe you have the ability to be meaningful to a well-defined set of customers who choose you over the competition for specific, sustainable reasons, good on you.

Just remember, as Bernadette reminds us, it’s not so easy to create meaning at scale, particularly if you need that scale to stay in business.

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When politicians start a campaign one of the first questions they ask is how they can appeal to the base. Mainstream candidates lock into the usual suspects for rally turnout and fund-raising. The reformers struggle for voter attention and ways to tap into the key PAC’s and the Koch’s and Soros’ of the world.

Traditional brand marketers usually start here as well. We focus on more and better ways of activating existing consumers where the investment to acquire them is sunk and where we already know that they like us and buy often. It seems like a perfectly logical place to concentrate our efforts.

Except where those cohorts are aging out of maintaining their spending. Think Sears.

Except where their needs have shifted and we are no longer their brand or store of choice. Think Barnes & Noble.

Except where a new disruptive model has come along and is doing things we can’t while gobbling up our core customers’ share of wallet. Think Warby Parker and LensCrafters.

Except where we are not replenishing defectors or downward migrators with enough new profitable customers. Think JC Penney.

Good customer analysis always starts with the base. Better customer analysis is focused on a deep understanding of the leverage and limitations inherent in our core segments and yields the insight required to know where to go next and how urgent and powerful any shifts need to be.

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Let me be clear: I’m pretty into all things omni-channel. Get me started talking about creating a single view of the customer, silo-busting, frictionless commerce, creating a seamless experience, etc. you might want to order a pizza. We could be here for a while.

I was named the VP of Multi-channel Integration at Sears way back in 1999. I led multi-channel initiatives and enterprise customer analytics at the Neiman Marcus Group from 2004-2008. I’ve written dozens of related posts and given numerous speeches on the topic during the last few years. I’m a believer.

Yet much of what passes as inspired strategy on the part of brands extolling their new-found “omni-ness” is, well, let’s just say it ranges between being disingenuous and outright foolhardy. And then there are the legions of analysts, pundits, consultants and software providers peddling a guaranteed path to customer-centricity nirvana. Much is hype. Some is just plain dumb. Here’s an attempt to move toward more “truthiness.”

You don’t really mean “omni.” “Omni-channel” means “all” or “every” and typically refers to both channels for communications and for transactions. Do you really intend to sell on cruise ships? In airports? How about door-to-door sales? Are you going to do infomercials? I didn’t think so. What you really mean is expanding your marketing and sales channels to those essential for the acquisition, growth and retention of key consumer segments–and being really good at doing it. A rush to invest in omni-channel without an actionable segmentation–and without understanding which levers are really the most important to hone in on–is a license to lose money and waste precious time.

Omni-channel customers are not your best customers. Chances are it’s the other way around. And causality matters. A lot. The customers that already trust your brand are often the early adopters of new media and new places to buy. There is a dangerous false narrative that suggests that simply by becoming omni-channel a world of new sales will open to you. As Kevin Hillstrom has pointed out, many companies that have gone omni-channel have failed to improve their business. This is usually because the brand’s core is weak and merely adding more places to research and buy does not fix the underlying issues (see Sears). The best multi-channel strategies are rooted in a deep understanding of current customer behavior–and prioritize opportunities to stem defection, address new customer acquisition barriers and build add-on sales. A sensible growth strategy has clear building blocks, not a mad rush into e-commerce or rolling-out the next bright and shiny mobile or social media application.

You say you want a revolution. Yet, organizational and data silos abound. Yet, analysis of most promotions still have a single channel focus. Yet, much of your marketing remains mass, rather than personalized. The underlying move to omni-channel is about customer-centricity. As long as you hold on to traditional metrics, silo-ed organizational structures and rely on fragmented data and batch, blast and hope marketing programs, not much is really changing.

Confusing necessary with sufficient. To be sure, more and more customers are becoming cross-channel shoppers and, particularly with the rapid growth of mobile devices, the distinction between e-commerce and physical retail is blurring. Certain “omni” capabilities like order online, pick up in the store are becoming base expectations. It’s hard to imagine that many retailers will survive, much less thrive, without robust integration capabilities and compelling web and mobile offerings. But far too many brands think that by adding these newish features they are doing enough. They’re not. Many of these capabilities are becoming table-stakes. In other cases, they are expensive and complicated “nice to have’s.” What you need to do to keep pace is not the same as what you need to do to become differentiated and remarkable. Confuse this at your own peril.

New hybrid-models are genius. The press is eating up Warby Parker’s, Bonobos and many other e-tailers move into physical locations and raving about their productivity numbers. First, this isn’t new (see Williams-Sonoma). Second, the move into actual stores had to happen. Over 3 year ago I was sitting with the CEO of one of these companies and asked him when they would think about opening stores. He answered: “we will never have physical stores.” Now he’s on CNBC singing their praises. Did I have the gift of prophecy? Of course not; the move was totally foreseeable given the known economics and limitations of pure-play e-commerce. Lastly, what would be remarkable about these hybrid-models’ sale productivity in their initial forays into the physical realm is if they did NOT do huge numbers. Bear in mind, they have opened stores in trade areas where they already have a density of customers and are in very small locations. Comparing their initial results to more mature specialty stores is silly. Comparing them to say, the top 2 or 3 bays of Neiman Marcus’ beauty counters in the Beverly Hills, Bal Harbour and Michigan Avenue stores is more apt (hint: it would be well over $3,000/sf). I am a repeat customer of the two brands I mentioned and believe they have bright futures. But let’s be careful of false positives. There is much more of this story to play out.

Omni-channel is a nice catch phrase, and there can be no question that we are witnessing an incredible transformation in how consumers shop and how brands need to do business. The status quo is not an option, but neither is a blind rush into all things “omni.”

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There are some who think that most brick & mortar stores are eventually going away and that e-commerce can have a compound annual growth rate of 15% until the end of time. To which I answer, “don’t be silly” and “of course not.”

There are many powerful reasons for physical retail locations to exist. In fact, we are already witnessing the limits of pure-play models as online only players are opening more traditional store-fronts (Warby Parker, Bonobos, Amazon and many others). Well established direct-to-consumer brands like LL Bean are doubling down on a commitment to retail store expansion. And even with the explosion of online shopping, close to 95% of transactions still take place in a traditional store.

When you take out products that can be delivered digitally (books, movies, games and the like) in most cases, for most consumers, there is value in being able to go see, try on, or touch the actual product. Having a live conversation with a well-trained sales associate can be extremely helpful. Physical stores offer a social experience that can’t be readily duplicated via the web or smart phone. And, typically, you can take the product with you, rather than having to wait.

Having said this, digitally enabled business models ARE disrupting every category and chipping away at many historical advantages of bricks & mortar. Websites often have better information than in-store sales people. Assortments can be much wider and prices are often sharper. Next day delivery may be either good enough or simply more convenient than having to drive to a mall and deal with the crowds. And we can be certain that future innovation will further eat away at traditional store advantages.

The fact is, in most instances, the future winners will be retailers that blend digital and physical offerings. They will deeply understand customers wants and desires and build a tightly integrated, highly flexible hybrid model rooted in treating different customers differently. That means a transformation, but not the elimination, of physical stores.

By contrast, the losers will be those that blindly adopt all things omni-channel.

The losers will be those traditional retailers that continue to run a bolted on and siloed e-commerce channel.

The losers will be those who fail to see the interplay between digital and physical stores and close too many doors–and turn the remaining ones into boring museums of best-sellers and “me too” products.

The losers will be those who hold on to one-size-fits-all customer and marketing strategies.

Consumers will continue going to stores for many, many years to come. Whether they will come to your store is a different question.

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There is no question that e-commerce has transformed the way virtually everyone shops today. And to say that digital marketing and online shopping has been disruptive would be an understatement.

Much of retail’s market value created over the past decade has been driven by Amazon and other pure-play brands. Dozens of once powerful retail names have been hammered or completely felled by the advent of e-commerce. Many are now closing stores and desperately seeking to re-invent themselves to stay relevant or merely survive.

The digital darlings have a huge advantage over traditional retailers. As they seek to scale their claimed game changing model and to build a brand, profitability is not only a secondary consideration it is often eschewed entirely. For most, there is a land grab mentality, a semi-blind quest to acquire customers at almost any cost for fear that a more measured approach will allow new entrants to emerge or established competitors to respond more effectively–or, more cynically, will cause investors to wise up to the limitations of the underlying business model.

The number of times investors have been seduced into a growth at any cost scenario that stalls are beginning to mount. Many piled into flash-sale deals when the shake-out in that sector was totally foreseeable. Fab.com’s recent collapse won’t be only major e-tail meltdown. A shake-out is starting to happen as it’s becoming more and more clear that too many customers are being acquired at costs well above their potential life-time value. And while many are lauding the move of Warby Parker, Bonobos and others into physical stores, this evolution is borne less of brilliant insight and more of the realization that their land grab marketing efforts were rapidly losing altitude and new customer acquisition strategies were needed to maintain expected growth.

This is not to say that some of the highly valued and increasingly respected e-commerce brands don’t deserve our accolades and won’t turn out to be fantastic investments. But three things need to kept in mind as we move forward:

Virtually no e-commerce only retail brands of any size have consistently made any money, including Amazon

Most digital retailers will need a physical store presence to optimize their brand potential

It’s comparatively easy to cost effectively acquire and retain early adopters in a digital-only model. It’s the marginal cost vs. the lifetime value of the next tranche of customers that provides real insight into the ultimate validity of the concept.

Adopting a land grab mentality is not inherently bad. In some situations it clearly is warranted. The problem comes when we don’t have a clear view of how far to push it and what we’re left with when it ends.